In 1968, George Wallace
ran as a third-party candidate against Nixon and Humphrey, on an explicitly
segregationist platform. Humphrey had been the main champion of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 in the Senate; Nixon, while no civil rights activist,
rejected an overtly racist platform. Feeling abandoned by both parties,
Southern white racists flocked to Wallace's cause, winning him the Deep
South states of Ark., La., Miss., Ala. and Ga.

Political analyst
and Nixon campaigner Kevin Phillips, analysing 1948-1968 voting trends,
viewed these rebellious Southern voters as ripe for Republican picking.
In The Emerging Republican Majority (Arlington House, 1969), he
correctly predicted that the Republican party would shift its national
base to the South by appealing to whites' disaffection with liberal democratic
racial and welfare policies. President Nixon shrewdly played this "Southern
strategy" by promoting affirmative action in employment, a "wedge"
issue that later Republicans would exploit to split the Democratic coalition
of white working class and black voters. (See John Skrentny, The Ironies
of Affirmative Action (U Chicago Press, 1996)). This strategy soon
produced the racial party alignments that prevail today.